Head and Heart
by FoolishNostalgia
Summary: Hikaru confronts Kyosuke during a date. What goes on inside his head may be a little surprising!


None of these characters belong to me; they are the exclusive property of Izumi Matsumoto. However if Madoka were mine I wouldn't complain.

**Head and Heart**

The subconscious is like a house. Within its quarters reside the same two tenants for each and every person. However for every different person a different relationship between these two exist.

One of these renters is the head, the impulsive, by the books, thinking machine.

The other is the heart, whose personality is as unfathomable as the ocean.

Generally these two rarely get along, but in extreme circumstances, or ones that require a level head and steady heart, they'll sit around the coffee table and use conflict resolution skills to reach a compromise.

Or, as the case usually is, scheme behind each others backs and make a choice based wholly on their own best interests.

In the case of adolescents they argue frequently and are prone to bouts of spite and selfishness.

At noon a bright yellow-pale sun hung overhead streaming radiant curtains of light onto the world below.

These drapes of sub-atomic particles danced upon the river of the local park as two teens gazed into its shimmering depths.

It was a kind of majestic day, bright blue sky, an occasional bird singing overhead. A cooling breeze drifted lazily keeping the temperature at a nice warm degree.

In fact it was the same kind of day that the shorter of the two gazing teens, Hikaru Hiyama, had dreamt about the previous night.

Yet instead of smiling at the memory of what had transpired in her dream she was distracted intently by the sheer coincidence of this moment.

Here she stood, in a pink and white tank top, thigh-revealing khaki shorts, wearing leather sandals and standing next to her darling, Kyosuke Kasuga.

In fact by another coincidence he was dressed as she had dreamt, or at least that what she believed she had dreamt, that bit was a little fuzzy, you know how dreams are.

But it was Kyosuke, and that's what counted. They were standing near one another, but not hip to hip.

Hikaru had hoped that by purposefully putting a small distance between them he would scoot himself up next to her.

Yet he remained still. His eyes cast upon the river, the reflection of the dancing light kaledoscoping images within.

Kyosuke's brown orbs revealed nothing of his inner thoughts. His face remained stoic, even when Hikaru took the initiative to slip up close next to him.

In her dream she had been just like this with him, and then overcome with emotion confessed everything to him.

It almost seemed trivial, to proclaim her love, but she hadn't done so yet, and the reason for never doing so sat quietly in the back of her mind. She was an optimist by nature, maybe a little dramatic at times but by trying to take their relationship a step farther it was a leap of faith and she knew it.

Her face was a portrait of contemplation and nervous anxiety, brow furrowed with eyes set in steely determination. "Today is the day" she thought to herself, "I've got to tell him, I feel like I'm losing him, and I'm not happy without knowing his answer."

At her side and two years her senior Kyosuke Kasuga stared at the river, his face unreadable by the girl.

"Okay Hikaru," she whispered to herself and took a deep breath. In this moment, as she turned to face her darling time slowed and her mind started working overtime while her heart resumed a debate started the night before...

'You know this isn't a good idea,' said her head to her heart.

The heart frowned. 'You've made your point before, but don't you think it's time to confirm once and for all what he feels?'

'And what if he turns us down? Then what?' The mind argued.

'Aren't you usually optimistic? Look, we've been with this indecisive boy for a while now, don't you think it's been almost TOO LONG to not know?' Her heart challenged.

For a moment the mind had to agree. Sure this pair had been dating for an extended period of time, and he was an indecisive as a fat man at a dessert buffet, yet the mind felt something was amiss.

Surely it was just an overactive imagination, right? Occasionally he was unreadable, unaffectionate, and completely unaware of Hikaru's more than suggestive advances, but he was a teenage boy, it's all forgivable.

Still, there was a distinct fear for the mind that what the heart wanted was going to be a bad choice. So, to play its role as head and arch rival to the heart it continued trying to put doubts into the heart.

'You realize however that should he fail to reciprocate Hikaru's feelings you'll be taking most of the pain don't you?'

The heart shrugged. 'Love is like that, but it hurts me enough to not know. So why not just put the final stake in, or at best, take it right out?'

Hikaru's mind glared. 'I still don't like it, I mean look at the goof ball, just staring into space like nothing wonderful may happen in the next moment.'

From the windows of Hikaru's subconscious house they watched the teen in silence. Indeed, Kyosuke had changed neither expression, nor demeanor from moments ago, his mind lost in a sea of raven hair...

Hikaru's brain came up with a question often asked of her in the past, 'What is it you seen in him anyways? He's not strong, or smart, or tall, or anything good. Just some average guy.'

'From your lofty perspective I would assume no less from you. That's why you think and I feel.' The heart retorted. 'Kyosuke is genuinely nice, kind, caring, and that's more wonderful than any physical characteristic.'

The brain could feel itself losing the battle and attempted one last desperation attack. 'I think it's too early to speak of love though. How do you know that you couldn't feel that way about someone else?'

'There is no love more pure than that of a young maiden,' the heart said poetically, 'him or none, that's the way it will be.'

This arguing was pointless. The heart of a teenage girl is as stubborn as the attempts of a teenage boy trying to get into her pants.

Although her head knew better it conceded defeat. Best let live and learn, and maybe, just maybe, something amazing would come of this.

As time resumed its flowing pace Hikaru gently grabbed Kyosuke's hand, earning her an inaudible gasp and the look of one's face that has been broken from thoughts unwillingly. For a moment she was dismayed but quickly regained her composure as the eyes of her beloved focused on her.

He smiled and didn't try to take her hand away, 'That's a good sign,' she thought gleefully. However she didn't let that make her smile, as it would have done previously. Hikaru was focused on her mission and now was the moment.

She took a deep breath.

Kyosuke was still a little disorientated having just thought of Ayukawa's next birthday gift and her response to his affection. In essence it involved a small box and the reaction akin of tackling a purse thief with the intent of smothering him with love.

He had allowed his vision to blur as he concentrated on the naked curvy vision in his mind when a soft and shy hand grabbed his.

As he turned to look at the one whom so quietly grabbed him, his mind's eye placed the previously mentioned beauty over the top of the one in front of him, and he smiled in spite of himself.

When she took a deep breath his vision cleared at once and he was brought back down to reality with the force of a brick to the face. Maybe not that painfully, but you get the point.

Usually when Hikaru took deep breaths like this she was getting ready to shout, scream, or do something physically demanding, all of which Kyosuke wasn't prepared for.

However what came out of her mouth made his mind want to pack all of its assumptions based on Hikaru and toss them out the window in frustration.

"Sempai- I mean, Darling- er," she began, and the decided, "Kyosuke." She said his name softly, his name without suffix almost foreign to her.

"Kyosuke, we've been dating this for a while, almost two whole years and not once have either of us confessed our love to one another."

Hikaru turned her gaze down a bit because fear had told her not to look him in the eyes, at least not yet.

Had she done so, she may have stopped what she was going to say as Kyosuke's reaction to such a line started to register in his head.

She continued, "For a while I thought it was because I had almost kind of forced you into a relationship with me, but over time you never broke it off and if anything it seemed like you were getting used to the idea."

She paused to take a breath. For Kyosuke, his mind, for the moment, was baffled at Hikaru's sudden burst of maturity. He was having a hard time grasping the extreme forwardness of the usually bubbly and oblivious girl.

He was so caught up in trying to sort out where this sudden declaration was coming from that he almost missed what she had to say next.

Hikaru dared to look into his eyes. "Yet lately I've been feeling that this static relationship isn't what I want. It may sound selfish but I want more, beyond hand holdings and dates. I want to kiss you, I want to hold you passionately, I want you to be my first and only. Kyosuke, I love you."

Slowly Hikaru's eye started filling with tears. She would not let them fall, and fought them back with all her strength. In this moment, as she looked into his chocolate eyes, Hikaru felt she knew what was coming.

Overhead a bird beat its wings lazily in the air, each motion more slow than the last as time slowed for the inner thoughts of one whose world has just lost the laws of physics.

Stop.

Or at least that is what the flow of time felt like as Kyosuke's mind shifted into gear, cleaning the cobwebs that are the idle teenage boys' thoughts. However time never truly stops flowing, for the moment; however, it was just blocked by a sudden dam of panic.

'crapcrapcrapcrapcrap,' Kyosuke's mind started panicking, its normal processes run amok.

'Calm down,' urged his heart, 'this isn't the time to freak out. We've got a real dilemma here.'

His mind stopped its incessant panicked chanting, but still twitched anxiously as his heart continued.

'Now I know we thought that in time things would sort themselves out, that eventually we'd be with Ayukawa, and if worse came to worse we'd choose the time and place to break the news to Hikaru.'

Kyosuke's brain nodded.

'However we've been pre-empted by Hikaru and now we've got to get out of this,'

'I say play dumb and run away!' his brain interjected.

'Or, we can give her a solid answer. I mean she has just revealed her heart to us, and it's our moral duty to see that, for better or worse she has to have an answer.'

'Fine. Just find a way to tell her that we love Ayukawa and be done with it, I want no part in your schemes.'

'Funny coming from you, since you almost exclusively get your way. But I dear say I've actually grown quite fond Hikaru.' Kyosuke's heart confessed.

'WHAT?!?' His mind exclaimed, reeling in the double blow of shock that it'd received.

'Well think about it, even though that's what you do too much of. Until Hikaru Kyosuke's never been kissed...'

'Why should that matter?'

'And he hasn't been living in one place long enough to get a girlfriend,' add the heart.

'Not his fault though'

'Irrelevant. And furthermore I quite like all the affection Hikaru gives, and the joy she takes in when we decide to show some back. Personally I feel that she's a much better candidate for long term commitment than Ayukawa is...'

If brains could raise eyebrows, Kyosuke's was doing just that. After a brief pause it exclaimed very quickly, 'you'vegottobekiddingme!'

Unwavered by the head's linear thought patters it stated, 'But I'm not, I'm kind of tired playing this bait and wait with Ayukawa. It's really taxing on me, you know?'

'Sorry, I don't know,' Kyosuke's brain said matter of fancily, 'but Ayukawa is the kind of girl we've been looking for. Smart, beautiful...'

'She's also temperamental, jealous, and difficult to keep happy. Besides Hikaru's pretty cute and sexy if she tries.'

'...But look at the circumstances surrounding our whole relationship to Hikaru. I mean when we first met her she hated us, called us weak, and was generally quite a mean bit-'

Kyosuke's heart stopped the head, 'But for as mean as she was, Hikaru has shown that same amount of passion after getting to know us, but in a much more affectionate way.'

'And then there was the fact that Kyosuke was in a hurry and then collided with her. After all that things changed, she started calling him darling and hanging on to him, and being quite the nuisance.' The head noted.

'Lest you forget he did kind of lock lips with her. I mean that's kind of a big thing, in case you forgot.'

His head was getting miffed. 'It was completely accidental! And she took it way out of context which started getting us into this mess. And in case YOU forgot, Ayukawa came into his life first.'

'And they say first the worst, second the best...'

'You're impossible!'

Outside of Kyosuke's subconscious Hikaru was still looking teary-eyed, expectantly, at a very shocked looking Kyosuke. Still building against the dam, time flowed.

'Look, I'm just saying that Hikaru is here, she's now, and she's already given us her heart. I don't want to see our trio destroyed because we turn her down.' Kyosuke's heart continued.

'You're starting to sound like me,' his head stated. 'But even if we decided, not saying we will, to accept her love and return it with ours, don't you think that will also destroy the group?'

The heart smiled, 'Now you're thinking. You're finally learning.' It would have added good boy, and patted the mind's head, but the heart didn't want to press its luck. 'But we don't know how Ayukawa feels, some days it's like we're meant to be and others it's like we're natural enemies.'

The head paused to reflect on this. Seeing its advantage the heart pressed, 'You're also assuming that Ayukawa has something for us and won't take this knowledge kindly.'

The head nodded.

'Still, I do feel that there may be a hope in holding out, don't you think?' the heart smiled.

'So you're saying that you're just joking?' the mind asked, confused.

'Of course. I've room enough to take pity on Hikaru because of her naivety, but I've only got the space to truly love one and I've already booked it.'

Kyosuke's head glared. 'I hate you'

'But you learned an important lesson today.' The heart grinned.

'Now, let's get to business, we just have to let her down softly. I'll take the pain of having to deliver the blow, but you have to say the words.' The heart offered.

'Deal.'

For a moment, no more than microseconds, the mind was processing a response to give to Hikaru. However in its pondering both the head and heart forgot one important detail about the subconscious house of men.

There is also a third resident in the subconscious house, but only for half of the gender population. Its powers lay dormant until the need arises.

In the circumstances of when head and heart argue, but before they can act this third resident easily slips past both during the confusion and tries its damned hardest to get what it wants.

In this moment it's thought patterns went like this, 'Ayukawa equals uncertain. Hikaru equals green light.'

Before the head could communicate with its owner time burst forth, and like the mind of one who's trapped in a vortex of currents from the rapid waters, so too did Kyosuke's mind feel as motion resumed its pace.

"Hikaru," he said softly, "I love you too."

'Oh shi-' cried his subconscious in chorus, as Hikaru performed an action akin to one tackling a purse thief with every intention of smothering him with love.

ENDprologue.

This happens before Kyosuke jumps back and saves Ayukawa in the past, earning him the title of pedophile.

Please leave your comments, any and all are appreciated.

Penguin


End file.
